A Trumped up presidency? You betcha.What do we do now?

With all of the hand-wringing and emotional outpouring of fear, disgust and confusion, it is difficult to put the following into words. If you voted for Hillary Clinton, you are not at fault. You are not culpable for electing a man who thinks that grabbing a woman by the pussy and kissing whoever he wants because he is rich is okay. You are not responsible for putting a man, who has flippantly stated that he would use nuclear weapons and called Mexicans rapists and murderers, into the most powerful position in the world. It is not because of you that your daughters will continue to assume, and see examples of, misogyny as a societal norm and that women should be treated as second class, or worse, citizens.

If you did not vote for Clinton and didn’t vote for Trump, I hope you voted out of a sense that the person you voted for was truly going to do a good job and not in protest. Even if you did vote in protest, this isn’t about blame. This is about surviving and hoping we can do better next time. (Trump supporters, you won, so “YAY for you!” and carry on.)

Assuming that the Electoral College selects Trump and assuming that he wants the job, the world will have to deal with a man who knows nothing about how a democratic government is run. As a CEO and businessman, Trump is used to being the person in charge – it’s his way or “You’re fired.” However, few ordinary citizens will feel any change except for the worse during Trump’s presidency. It probably wouldn’t have been much different under Hillary Clinton, we would have just felt better about the direction of our country, and girls would have had someone they could look up to in a position they could then aspire to be in.

Back in TimeBut how do we do better next time? We could look at history to help rationalize the choice of Trump. Societies do not advance in a straight upward climb but in a series of forward and backward movements. Trump is the perfect antithesis of Obama.

From history, we could see that the U.S. wasn’t ready for a woman president. Black men got the right to vote in 1870 with the 15th Amendment. (There were/are still problems with instituting that law, but it is on the books.) It took women 50 more years before they got the vote with the 19th Amendment in 1920. Seeing this precedent, there is no way that Hillary Clinton could’ve become president so soon after Obama.

History, however, may not help us with doing better the next time. After all, no one learned from Britain’s Brexit vote, and it was held up as an example of very recent backwards movement that was instigated in part through those casting a protest vote. Instead, maybe we should look at economics and those who have been adversely affected under Obama.

All about the BenjaminsThe traditional measure of a good economy has been the Dow Jones which has been in a bull market since 2009. This rush to buy stocks hasn’t trickled down to the lower economic levels, and it came after large companies, most notably banks, received billions of dollars in bailouts. Companies cut jobs in that recession and those were replaced with lower paying, entry level service jobs. People lost their homes while banks got their money anyway, in spite of their wrong doing and their part in wrecking the global economy. Lending institutions continue gouging students and others with high interest rates. People are feeling the burn of higher prices with less money and more time at work, a place that most Americans despise. What’s more, the discrepancy in income between employee and employer/CEO is staggering, with CEOs typically making more than 300 times the wage of their average worker. Income is only one type of separation, and while it may be the most devastating, it is the least recognized because all Americans still believe falsely that if they work hard, they will be able to reach the level of their CEO.

Separation AnxietyThe other part of that separation is when groups try to get recognition for their particular issue. Yes, Black Lives Matter, #YesAllWomen, and Feminism, I’m looking at you, but I am sure there are others. It’s not that these movements don’t matter or don’t have a point. It’s that they generally marginalize and denigrate white people, especially white men. While that is something that white men have been doing to these “minority” groups for decades, individual white men are not in and of themselves guilty for the action of every other white male. Accusations of using white privilege, especially when a person is not aware of what that is, or not being relevant because of gender or race, further separate us as communities. White men don’t want to be guilty for the same reason that others experience oppression. Not every black person and not every woman believes in these movements. Splintering in the groups that claim to make statements for everyone of a single race or gender is less detrimental than those who step forward to say that they do not want to be connected with the movement.

Your Facebook feed, Yahoo!’s news service and other Internet related media is another way that we separate ourselves from each other. Aside from the incessant use of phones to communicate with others when there is another person right next to you, these Internet media channels are curating your news feed. They aren’t showing you things you need to know but just things that you like to know. Did you see a majority of anti-Hillary, pro-Trump posts (or vice versa)? It doesn’t mean that these posts were true, correct, or factual. It just means that your Internet media thought it would help support your own world view. If you can’t understand how someone could vote for crooked Hillary or for the Orange Nazi, it’s because your news feed isn’t helping you to be more compassionate and empathetic. It is just helping you support your own sense of self. (Don’t forget to take a selfie while reading this and post it to your favorite social media site; after all, life is all about you and what you believe, regardless of the actual facts.)

Capitalism PersonifiedIn the end, Trump won because he embodies everything that is needed to be great in a capitalistic (not democratic) society. He is a brash, loud, forceful bully, who abuses the rules to run businesses into the ground. He continues to trade his wives in like they were so much arm candy, and he believes that beauty is a woman’s greatest asset. Since sex sells, this isn’t a misogynistic, loyalty or even love question. It is a quest for the best as seen through a culture that idolizes youth and the ability to have the trophy wife. Go big or go home, be independent, grab power because no one is going to give it to you and always look out for #1.

If we want to have better candidates and a better political system, we have to change the economic system and the culture that idolizes the individual over the group. Capitalism, at its core, is about being selfish. The individual will do what is best for the individual and screw everyone else. These actions will drive the invisible hand of capitalism. As long as selfishness is accompanied with a lack of empathy and compassion, the U.S. will always be vulnerable to demagogues like Trump.

We need to learn that words are important. Socialism is not communism. Capitalism is not democracy. Money is not speech. Corporations are not people. If someone says something loudly enough and long enough, no matter how false it is, it becomes the truth. In modern society, words are really the only thing that hurt, and the scars they leave go to the core of the human being.

In short, we have to stop being mean to each other, stop trolling on the Internet and start realizing that everyone is a person that deserves a fair shot at things. That includes, as much as you or I might dislike it, giving Donald Trump the opportunity to make the best of his presidency, now that he has won.

If you have read this far, I thank you, and I urge you to say something nice to everyone you meet and all the people who have survived your Facebook purging. Then reach out to someone different than you and help that person have a better day. If we work one on one over the next 4 years, we might find our choices for president will improve, and maybe the hate-mongering media on both sides will become a distant, sad memory.